Motor Therapy Toys for under $20

Children learn best through play, but not just any play. Certain play-based exercises are more important than others. However, activities and exercises that can be difficult for developing children, may seem more like “work” rather than play.

For this reason, we utilize different tools and therapy toys to support the child’s foundational learning through play to help purposeful movement feel less repetitive. Adding toys, tools and manipulatives to a child’s therapy or in-home routine builds cognitive growth, while allowing the child to develop many gross and fine motor skills automatically.

Therapy Toys that Support Learning Areas

It’s important to remember not all toys are equal. When choosing toys and tools to use at home or in your therapy sessions, keep some exercises and activities in mind to know how you plan to incorporate them with the child or your students. There are toys that target different areas of development and it’s a good idea to try a variety to target multiple areas of the body and the brain.

Areas of body and the brain you want to primarily focus on to build neural connections include the following:

• Eye-hand coordination
• Cross patterning (midline crossing)
• Sensory processing
• Spatial Awareness
• Balance and Vestibular
• Proprioception
• Core, neck, back and shoulder strength
• Hand, finger and wrist strength

While all of these areas of the body may not seem connected to cognitive learning, they directly support the brain hierarchy and higher levels of learning as the child grows older.

If a child’s balance or core strength is underdeveloped, it may impact the child’s ability to maintain sustained focus and concentration in the classroom later down the road. Or, if a child has poor hand grip and finger strength, they may struggle with handwriting. In addition, other areas of learning that may fall behind when these skills are not fully developed are as follows:

• Emotional grounding
• Executive function
• Auditory processing and retention
• Task completion
• Following directions
• Ability to filter out background noise
• Tracking across the page when reading
• Writing letters, numbers and sentences correctly across the page

These are just a few examples, but there are many more areas of development that purposeful movement exercises, especially with toys, can help the child’s learning ability to develop automatically. Some children become so mentally focused on keeping their body still or filtering out unwanted stimuli within their environment, they cannot focus solely on learning when needed.

Toys Under $20

Purchasing several toys can be overwhelming and expensive for many therapists and parents. If you are just getting started, or if you only want to grab a few key items, check out some of the most important we recommend here.

However, you can add several items to your therapy toolbox or your home for under $20. Making your therapy sessions and in-home play doesn’t have to break the bank. And, you can continue to add many of these items overtime to keep play-based strategies new, fresh and fun. As we all know, kids are more likely to participate in exercises that target cognitive growth when they appear to be playful, rather than difficult or like work.

Check out a few of the following therapy toys that can help your child or students in a number of learning areas:

What to add to your Sensory Room?

For additional items, or our recommendations for the most important, download our list of sensory toys you can add to your Sensory Room in your therapy centers or at your home.

Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs